According to People magazine, Bristol Palin and her fiancee have split.
I wish her well--while it's not going to be easy for her, it will be a heck of a lot easier for her than for a young woman who doesn't have the kind of financial support than her family has.
And, I have to say, this isn't much of a surprise. But this is't really about Bristol Palin
It also isn't really about the big deal that her mother made about how the two kids were going to get married, and how the Christian Right jumped all over this saying "see, this is just great!!"
No, this is, again, about choice. Where I live, you have to travel about 3 hours to find a city in this state that will perform an abortion for a woman. Or, you can go across state lines about an hour or so.
For many, that's easy--hop in a car and go.
For other women, that's no choice at all. They don't have the means to get to a provider that will perform an abortion. One woman I know asked her local doctor where she could go to get an abortion, and the nurse, standing there, said "You aren't really going to kill that child, are you?"
Wow.
For others, keeping a child is an easy choice. They have a support system that allows them access to health care. They have the financial means to raise a child. They are at a place in their lives where taking on that huge responsibility won't mean depriving their other children of enough food or a place to sleep. They weren't raped.
I'm sorry things didn't work out for Bristol Palin. But I never exppected it to. I'm also sorry that the Right held her up as a mode of a responsible teen. She was used by them to try to score cheap political points in order to further an anti-choice agenda.
I'm sorry that the Right pushes an abstinence-only education model that repeated studies show does not work. Not only doesn't it work, but it seems to lead to increased risk of pregnancy and STDs.
I had a conversation with a local woman about abstinence-only. She said that she didn't want her kids to get vaccinated against cervical cancer, because they shouldn't be having sex in the first place.
I told her that that was the same reasons I didn't want my kids wearing seatbelts: they shouldn't be speeding, and if they crashed, well people get what they deserve. She just looked at me kind of funny.